Number of false cheat reports is really getting old, fast

[Brian Peace]

Ok... I have brought this up before, and tried desparately to find solutions:

The number of false cheat reports is getting out of hand... this was a flight I have flown a HUNDRED times... parking in the same place, taxiing to the same place, using the same aircraft , or different aircraft, with no problems. Parking no where near fuel stations, not pausing, etc...

I have followed the procedure EXACTLY as outlined here: http://www.fsairlines.net/forum/viewtop ... =69&t=5449

Here is my flight: http://www.fsairlines.net/index.php5?st ... 905&p=7040

somehow the client is still seeing fit to randomly add fuel to planes, during flights or during shutdowns.

Guys in my airline using the exact procedure as outlined have been getting dinged for cheats nearly once every 2 days. please help! This problem with the client is going to force us to discontinue using FSA if it continues and I certainly do not want that as I really do enjoy it... but if all it causes is stress and frustration amongst my pilots... it will have to go. The penalty and fact that it's called "cheat" is not helping with matters at all... guys don't want to fly if they spend 2 hours at the sim, only to have their flight lose money and cost the airline reputation. At the very least, can the flights be reviewed more carefully and the fuel be corrected in the "accused of a cheat" aircraft instead of having such a harsh pently for what is a client side problem, and not a operator problem?

Thank you for your concern in looking at this ongiong matter of client malfunctions.

[Brian Peace]

Here is my debug.out file if I can figure out how to attach it.

well it says "the extension out is not allowed" hmm... how do I upload my debug file then?

[Brian Peace]

Ok I zipped it and that seems to have worked, here it is I hope this can help solve this mystery problem.. must be a pain in the derriere for you admins to be going through hundreds of "cheat" flights.

[jch5pilot]

Hello Brian,

can the flights be reviewed more carefully

You are not the only one around here to get falsely marked as a cheater.

Another pilot and myself did a flight to Malta and upon landing something must have gone wrong in the upload report process, giving us all sorts of weird figures on our flight reports. I submitted a support ticket and instead of trying to find the cause of the report upload problem, they somehow managed to ignor the reported problem completely and come to the conclusion we were cheating to gain money we didn't need by flying shared cockpit or something, based on the fact we departed/arrived within 5 minutes of eachother, which is what usually happens when you do flights online on Vatsim or something, does it not?

Once we got that resolved and got our airline off 'warning' status they ignored the original problem again and the ticket is now set to 'solved'. Our reputation was left in its lower state (due to the cheating status) and the bug with the flight reports caused the maintenance status on the aircraft we used to drop a good full 2% at least due to the incorrect flight duration (18 hours instead of 3). In all - not happy!

The reason I posted this is because I share your frustration in the amount of wrong 'cheating' reports going around. I have not had many, but it is still not nice. Hopefully yours can get sorted a bit easier than ours!

Please don't get me wrong, FSairlines is fantastic for what it offers and the staff are doing a brilliant job in keeping it running, updated and so on, but as you have expressed, it is these sort of things that put you off it.

James

[Quantum]

Hi Brian,

The client recorded that you bought 2714kgs and departed with 6408kgs. When you arrived at your destination you landed with 16561kgs and ended flight with 16477kgs after taxiing in. The expected block fuel is in the region of 3036kgs so you should have had an arrival fuel of 3372 kgs. The A320 holds 19155kgs fuel and if you deduct the expected block fuel of 3036kgs you are left with 16119kgs which is close to your arrrival fuel. So it looks like just after departure your aircraft fuel was reset to 100%. Can you check your FSUIPC key settings and see if you have anything assigned to the function 'add fuel' ?

Regards

John

[Brian Peace]

John,

First of all, thanks for the "gentler" correction of the flight than the -5 rating and lost profit. That's appreciated a LOT.

I use FSUPIC free ware so is there even a way I can assign keys? I'll try... I will also look in the genral sim settings to find out if somehow there's a fuel up command, and I will disbale it if I can. Could perhaps my fat fingers have autofeuled the aircraft in flight by acidentally typing the wrong button chatting on vatsim or texting on 122.8 on vatsim??

[Quantum]

Hi Brian

I can't be sure I'm afraid. I know when I used to fly online a while back, I lost count of the number of times I extended my gear when I thought I was typing in the chat window, so it's possible you could have but only you will have an answer. I posted a tutorial and stickied it in this forum with some hopefully useful info. It is quite easy to monitor your fuel at all stages of the flight by looking to see what the client is reading from your simulator. You can also monitor your fuel % using the shift + Z facility. Whenever possible at CBFS we do extensive testing of aircraft before we start using them on FSA and some aircraft do exhibit strange behaviour at times. It is not down to the client, it is down to the programmer/designer of the aircraft. One aircraft stopped using fuel at one point and it was all down to fuel tanks and selectors. I think that was fixed with a cfg edit somehow.

The point is with all these refuelling problems is that some users persistantly use aircraft without using fuel, using low fuel scalars to make their aircraft fuel effeicient, gain fuel by incorrect parking etc etc. Sometimes the gains are huge particularly when on the next few flights they get free fuel. Re-calculating the fuel and setting the flight as a cheat/gained advantage hopefully brings some sort of response. It is no excuse for folk to say they didn't do anything wrong. Perhaps they didn't but the aircraft combination they are using with FSA can be giving a considerable advantage.

I had one pilot recently protesting when I dinged the flight as a cheat as he had done nothing wrong. The only wrong thing he was doing was not monitoring his fuel usage and checking if it was a realistic fuel burn. He had the default B747 which M$ have given a range of in excess of 20,000nm due to it's extremely low fuel burn.

Everyone has to act responsibly on FSA and that includes ensuring that they are operating realistically.

Hopefully you will be able to get to the bottom of where your problem lays and can report back. All I can say is be vigilant with your aircraft and try and catch the point where fuel gets added and you may have a 'Euerka! moment'.

Regards

John

[Brian Peace]

The problem is I do the same flight very repetitively. With the same aircraft, same parking, same everything. and then ONE gets a cheat somehow... I don't even know where to start lookin?

I guess what I am asking for, is for a future release of the cleint to "prevent any and all fuel changes" once the flight has started, by any means, purposefull, or accidental.

I just don't understand why the client is accepting added fuel, and then recording us as a cheat. I'm not "criticizing" the client, but suggesting a way to fix it, or improve it. With this "loophole" in it people are no doubt going to figure out a way to use it to their advantage.

[Brian Peace]

AGAIN tonight!

I watched the client! It had correct fuel until I hit the "end flight" button! Then it showed wrong fuel and filled my plane somehow. I did NOT shut engines off, pause, or taxi past any fuel. I WATCHED it... what is going on??

http://www.fsairlines.net/index.php5?st ... 905&p=7040

[Telide]

Hi Brian

May I suggest a screenshot diary of these events if possable so at every magor event you take a screen before and after so for e.g. take one of the flight info in the FSA client before flight then start you flight and take one of the client and every other magor change (including the end flight problem)

as so please post your debug file this may have some key information to correct this problem

Hope thiese ideas haelps you and the admins solve this problem

Will

EDIT: May i also suggest you try and differant A/C model to see if there is a problem in the aircraft itself Im sure you can get hold of a low quolity model from places such as avsim and other places alike see if this make any differance at all

[Quantum]

Hi Brian,

Which model are you using ?
How do you refuel ? (aircraft module/flight sim/client)

Regards

John

[Brian Peace]

Each time this has randomly happened, it's been with different aircraft. If I could bolt it down to one thing I would. It's happened once at CYXS, and twice at CYYC, to me. all three times it was different freeware aircraft. (727-200F, A320-200, and 737-200). I've parked at the exact same spot in cyyc hundreds of times in my other flights and everything is fine. It's just really odd.

Will my debug file help if I have done about 10 flights since the incident?

[Brian Peace]

and I use the fueling method where I enter the KG's I want in each tank, using the client to fuel the a/c.

[Telide]

Just a thought why not try changing your parking place as Im thinking if you use the same place every time slight changings in the place you park may put you closer to sothing that is with the fs code that fsa does not like marking as a cheat

i dont no if this will help but it could be worth a try

Also still need a debug file so that the admins can check for problems in there

Thanx
Will

[Quantum]

Hi Brian,

I was hoping that there would be a common denominator there but doesn't appear to be anything obvious. The fact that it's freeware doesn't dismiss there not being a bug in the aircraft/panel. All I can suggest is for you to keep a log of your flights and the fuel amounts tanked/used. As I said before at CBFS we had a problem with one particular aircraft which when loaded above a particular amount of fuel appearred OK at first but then inexplicably stopped using fuel for some reason and the client didn't reduce the fuel any more. This we had to sort out by changing the fuel tank configuration. This was several client releases ago. All I can say is be vigilant and if the fuel figures don't look right then back out of the client and do your own investigating to nail the problem. What I might suggest is to set your fuel using the simulator interface and then use the non-simple fuel mode to 'compare' fuel and not make any changes with the client interface. There are so many hundreds of different aircraft/panel combinations that people use and unfortunately there is bound to be one combo which isn't 100% compatible with the client for 100% of the time.

Regards

John